10 Ways The Video Game Industry Takes Advantage Of Its Biggest Fans

4. Flooding The Market With Shovelware

Most publishers are known for their successes, but even the most successful companies in the world have engaged in this practice at some point or another. 'Shovelware', as it€™s known, refers to the practice of releasing low budget, low quality games in huge quantities, essentially attempting to deceive unsuspecting shoppers into purchasing retrograde products unknowingly.

It€™s sometimes done to make a console€™s launch lineup seem more impressive, and other times just to make a quick buck, but in both cases, it€™s a fairly shoddy practice. Nintendo€™s Wii was probably the most exploited of last generation€™s consoles in this regard, being flooded right from the start by an endless stream of party games and terrible PS2 ports until it was almost the only thing the console was known for.

The term itself is a deviation of the term €œfreeware€, which is the practice by which third-party sites bundle their downloads with countless other unwanted, often hazardous programs. The fact that such a thing has been inflicted on unsuspecting gamers by the games industry is pretty shocking; it's overtly misleading, and it actively takes advantage of impulsive or otherwise inexperienced players. Not a great way to build trust.

Contributor
Contributor

Formerly an assistant editor, Richard's interests include detective fiction and Japanese horror movies.